I wish that folks would stop lumping suicide by gun into gun death stats. My reason is this: If someone is determined to kill themselves, they are going to use whatever means necessary, and all the gun laws in the world will not stop someone who has decided to off themselves.

I understand why the left likes to keep those numbers in the stat, because it bolsters their message, but it is disingenuous.

\That's all I have to say about that

I really wish you people would stop making this suicide argument. It is demonstrably false and it really undercuts anything else you say. Let it go. Suicide does not work that way. It is not a rational decision.

In NY and CT they do. Depending upon the shooter's ability, the NY threshold is 7 and CT is 10. (shhhh don't tell the gunman if he's truly not concerned about the act of murder he really can load the magazine to its full capacity)

Dusk-You-n-Me:And how one chooses to respond to statistics like these is apparently a matter of interpretation. For some on the right, the argument seems to be, "But look at how much better things are than 20 years ago!" For the left, the argument is, "We still have far more gun deaths than any industrialized democracy on the planet, and with some sensible safety measures, we can build on the recent progress and save more lives."

It's not just right and left. I'm opposed to gun control proposed thus far because none of the rules proposed would actually have stopped the events that they'll alleged to be aimed at stopping.

If someone has a new idea that isn't just "ban scary sounding looking" I'm all ears.

Dimensio:soakitincider: 2nd amendment:"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. "

the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

Please explain how banning all semi-automatic firearms and handguns and prohibiting you from accessing any functional firearm in your home is an infringement on your right to keep and bear arms.

Single shot/ bolt action/ pump/ etc generally are not suitable for self defense, particularly against the government. This country was founded on anti-tyranny ideals and the right of gun ownership allows us to stand up against the government if it becomes abusive.

sammyk:Interesting thing about background checks. 20 years ago the Brady act was signed into law implementing actual background checks. Lo and behold 20 years later gun violence is cut in half. But I am sure there will be someone here shortly to tell us the 2 things are in no way connected.

I wonder how it corrilates to the enactment of CCW legislation? About 20-25 years ago the states started to lessend the restricitons.

clkeagle:Done in two. Individual homicides by people with their backgrounds checked? Sad, but it's the price of living of a gun-owning society.Mass homicides by people who had no business touching those weapons in the first place? Those deaths might have been prevented if not for the "don't grab muh gunz" crowd.

Please name these mass shootings which would have been prevented by background checks..

Given that same logic, you must be a member of the no-prohibitionist movement Then again maybe you like beer and have an acceptable threshold of drunk driving deaths that is greater than zero, much like most people to do with pretty much every issue.

doglover:I'm opposed to gun control proposed thus far because none of the rules proposed would actually have stopped the events that they'll alleged to be aimed at stopping.

It's very hard to stop events that have already happened. The idea is to prevent some of the future events from happening. I say some of because that is the goal - not reaching zero, reducing the likelihood.

randomjsa:sammyk: Good. Now lets see if we can do a better job of keeping crazy people from having guns, and felons too. As long as we keep having mass killings we are going to keep having the gun control debate. Just because we have made progress on gun violence doesn't mean we can just throw our hands up in the air and accept the tragedies we keep reliving.

'I'm glad people have this misconception and this false belief works in favor of what I really want... so it's fine'

There's something wrong with you when you basically don't care about what's true and are perfectly happy to let people believe something that's false just so long as gets you what you want.

EyeballKid:So, these are statistics that the NRA didn't buy off Congress to quit collecting? Sorry if my frown that says "you're full of farking bullshiat" hasn't suddenly vanished.

Yeah, the NRA waved a magic wand and stopped the FBI, DOJ, and ATF from ever collecting any data whatsoever! They are like that. You know, magic.

Its not like Congress decided to stop funding the CDC's boondoggle where they handed millions of taxpayer dollars to shoddy researchers with an axe to grind.

nekom:The newton massacre was carried out by lawfully purchased guns stolen from a crazy person's mother. Assault weapons bans may have some merit, but you could easily carry out the same sort of mass murder with a few semiautomatic pistols.

Like Cho did at Virginia Tech? Where he killed more people? Using 10 and 15 round magazines? I'm glad he didn't start a fire, like Kim Dae-Han did in 2003. Kim, a half-paralyzed man of 56, killed 198 people with two jugs of gas and a lighter. Zhang Pilin killed 112 people in 2002 by causing the plane he was on to crash.

'Assault weapon' bans and magazine restrictions are both moronic, and serve only to hamstring defensive uses of firearms. They won't stop mass killings, not even a total firearms ban can do that.

Saiga410:sammyk: Interesting thing about background checks. 20 years ago the Brady act was signed into law implementing actual background checks. Lo and behold 20 years later gun violence is cut in half. But I am sure there will be someone here shortly to tell us the 2 things are in no way connected.

I wonder how it corrilates to the enactment of CCW legislation? About 20-25 years ago the states started to lessend the restricitons.

Imagine just how much lower the "gun death" rate of the nation would be without those permit systems.

tricycleracer:Endive Wombat: I wish that folks would stop lumping suicide by gun into gun death stats. My reason is this: If someone is determined to kill themselves, they are going to use whatever means necessary,

You say that, but the FIREARM suicide rate went down 65% in Australia in the decade after their gun ban.

manimal2878:Lady Beryl Ersatz-Wendigo: Do we have an acceptable threshold of gun murders? It really should be zero.

Given that same logic, you must be a member of the no-prohibitionist movement Then again maybe you like beer and have an acceptable threshold of drunk driving deaths that is greater than zero, much like most people to do with pretty much every issue.

We need to set some expectations as I see it. Just like world peace can never be achieved, we will never be 100% from gun violence. We just need to determine how much we can tolerate at the expense of encroaching on the 2nd Amendment.

I'm just going to throw this out here. Maybe, just maybe, it's because despite humanity's obsession with focusing on the scariest and most horrible things that happen to anyone, maybe the world is a better place because of television and video games. Boston and New York fans aside, you can only see people every day, compete against them every day, talk to them, share forums, debate, argue, laugh, cry, blow things up, together every day for so long before trivial things like which particular state, country, or island you live on or in doesn't matter nearly so much as the basic fact that people are essentially people, and some of them are hot.

And x number of people are murdered each year by being pushed down stairs, so there's no excuse not to ban stairs as long as there is at least a single murder each year, right? 80,000 people are killed each year from alcohol. We seem to have no problem with that amount of death in exchange for our freedom to have an entertaining beverage, so until the number of gun deaths exceeds that number, you really have no right to question if the 12,000 murders per year are too much of a price to pay for our freedom to own defensive weapons.

That's because in 1996 a video game cost $20 bucks, now it's $70 bucks plus $30 worth of 'extras' they sell after you've bought the game.

No, videogames from the NES era through the PS2 era cost $50. That was the going price for a new title. Then the PS3/360 era raised that price to $60. The only semi-valid point was the extra money they make on the "extras", but the vast majority of game owners don't spend anywhere near $30 extra per game.

cman:For 30 years the crime rate has fallen, not 20 as you say. It has been a downward trend even before the Brady legislation was signed.

No, that's not true. The US violent crime rate has been dropping since the mid 90s, just like the rest of the Western world. There was a small decrease in the early 80s, when the baby boomers began getting too old for that shiat, but it increased again in the following years and topped out around '91-'92.

Dimensio:They were both written in the same general era, and they are both pretty much anachronisms.

You are correct; declaration of a protected liberty as an "anachronism" legally eliminates the protection, without any need for actual legislative revision.

Of course it doesn't. That's just my opinion. I realize it's not likely to ever go away, but it's as silly as worrying about quartering troops in your house in this day and age. When the constitution was written, blacks were property, women couldn't vote, etc. It's not some holy document to be worshiped as gospel.

tricycleracer:Endive Wombat: I wish that folks would stop lumping suicide by gun into gun death stats. My reason is this: If someone is determined to kill themselves, they are going to use whatever means necessary,

You say that, but the suicide rate went down 65% in Australia in the decade after their gun ban.

Did that have anything to do with the massive anti-suicide campaigns the government kicked into gear a year before the ban?

Dimensio:nekom: soakitincider: 2nd amendment:"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. "

the right of the people to KEEP and BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.

3rd amendment:

No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

They were both written in the same general era, and they are both pretty much anachronisms.

You are correct; declaration of a protected liberty as an "anachronism" legally eliminates the protection, without any need for actual legislative revision.

Indeed.

Amendments 1, and 4-11 were also written in that time. Time for them to relegated to figurehead status.

Come to think of it 13-15 are also pretty old. They're only about 70 years away from those other anachronisms. They too were written in a different time and we'll have to toss them aside eventually, might as well do it now while we're on a roll.

I do have an agenda when it comes to #13 though, I'm in favor labor reform as I've talked about before. I'm tired of all the 13th amendment purists out there blocking sensible slavery legislation. Laws that allow for limited slavery are constitutional, don't infringe on a person's right to attend sporting events, and would help the whole community. They deserve a vote.

BayouOtter:tricycleracer: Endive Wombat: I wish that folks would stop lumping suicide by gun into gun death stats. My reason is this: If someone is determined to kill themselves, they are going to use whatever means necessary,

You say that, but the suicide rate went down 65% in Australia in the decade after their gun ban.

Did that have anything to do with the massive anti-suicide campaigns the government kicked into gear a year before the ban?

I'm sure it was 100% that and had nothing to do with a gun ban. I yield to you, good sir.